Movies

Bugonia, starring Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
Trailer: Focus Features

Bugonia
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
Rated R
Buzzed 31 October 2025
#Bugonia

If more movies were like Sinners and Bugonia, what a wonderful movie world this would be.

The Andromeda Strain

It’s hard – really, really hard – to argue with a movie offering a back story involving Atlantis, ancient aliens, dinosaurs, Noah’s ark, evolution, global thermonuclear war, devolution, the suicide gene, drug trials and honeybees.

Bugonia is that movie and it jabs at pretty much everything.

Bugonia is based on the 2003 Korean feature Save the Green Planet!, written and directed by Jang Joon-hwan. This new version tells the story of a female pharmaceutical company CEO, Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), who’s kidnapped by a paranoid conspiracy theorist and his autistic cousin.

They’ve been put upon for too long.

They’ve suffered traumatic personal losses.

They’re ready to save humanity.

The mastermind is Teddy Gatz (Jesse Plemons), an earnest, well-meaning guy who works in the shipping department of Auxolith, Michelle’s company, which specializes in healing medicines and reverse-aging treatments.

Teddy has a ludicrous theory Michelle is an administrative alien from Andromeda. With the lunar eclipse only four days away, Teddy and his cousin, Donny (newcomer Aidin Delbis), kidnap the unsuspecting CEO right outside her house. They need her to arrange a meeting between them and the emperor of Andromeda.

But she’ll be a challenge to pin down. As Teddy hatches his plan with Donny, Michelle is seen practicing yoga, training in martial arts, treating her face to red-light therapy, brushing her teeth with the latest in electric brushes and downing nutritional supplements. As the pair execute their abduction plot (while hiding behind paper face masks of Jennifer Aniston), Michelle reaches for every last chance to defend herself, including shoe throwing.

In contrast to Michelle’s holistic lifestyle, Teddy and Donny prepare by abstaining from almost everything. That means no gaming, no screen time (except for suitable research), no distractions, no vaping and no masturbating. To definitively block any potential for Michelle making any sexual advances to seduce and weaken them, both undergo chemical castration.

Control the urges and be free, so says Teddy.

That’s all entertaining enough. But it’s just the setup.

Bugonia goes sideways (for all the right reasons) as the conspiracy theories unwind and reality sets in.

Bugonia’s reality, that is.

Flight of the Honeybee

For the record, the days of Fat Damon are officially over. One of the coolest things (of so many cool things) about Bugonia is Jesse Plemons, who’s no stranger to the world of director Yorgos Lanthimos, having co-starred with Stone in Kinds of Kindness. Plemons goes the Christian Bale route and while Plemons’ weight loss isn’t Machinist level, it is dramatic. Throw in a scruffy beard, long hair and a short ponytail and Plemons transforms into a wholly new character.

Teddy’s view: the world is full of hollow, harmless, hopeless people being suppressed and lulled into complacency by the machinery of corporations and politicians.

Sounds about right.

The titular "bugonia" is a Mediterranean ritual – mythological – involving a specific process of killing and treating an ox that will – after a certain amount of time – decompose the ox and yield a swarm of bees. Fair game for the region that’s home to Minotaurs, Gorgons, flying horses and, of course, Bugonia’s imaginative director, Yorgos Lanthimos.

The Greek director has become a steady buzz-generator during awards season, making a run for the Oscars in various capacities for The Lobster, The Favourite and Poor Things.

Bugonia, then, serves as a loose reference to Teddy’s side gig as a beekeeper. He laments the demise of bees through CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder), brought on by pesticides which – in theory – cause the worker bees to die off.

It becomes a point of contention between Teddy and Michelle. Teddy wants Michelle to orchestrate a meeting with the emperor of Andromeda. Of course, Michelle claims Teddy’s nuts. She’s not an alien from Andromeda. And, for the record, Teddy’s referencing out-of-date research. She claims pesticides were not causing their demise and bees are, in fact, making a comeback.

Teddy acknowledges he doesn’t get his news from the news; he has alternative sources. But he also knows "Andromeda code" when he sees it – and he sees it all over Michelle’s Instagram account.

In response, Michelle calls out all those online sources as an echo chamber of nonsense.

Stick to the Plan

Bugonia’s a fun movie to dissect because it succeeds on so many levels.

There’s some great corporate satire as Michelle – in her opening scenes – films a diversity video pumping up Auxolith’s overhauled corporate culture. She uses the word "diverse" ad nauseam as she yammers on about a diverse table featuring diverse people with diverse backgrounds, diverse genders and an abundance of diverse ideas. What Michelle wants, though, is a more diverse vocabulary for her presentation.

Auxolith is rebooting its corporate culture after a mysterious incident dents the company’s reputation. Bits and pieces of the controversy are revealed here and there as the action rumbles forward. That tragic situation of testing drugs on humans (featuring Alicia Silverstone as Teddy’s mother in black-and-white flashback segments) directly impacts Teddy’s family.

Part of Auxolith’s new culture is a half-hearted stab at work/life balance as Michelle obnoxiously touts the company’s new sense of employee freedom: nobody should work past 5:30 (unless they have work to do). Feel free to leave early unless – you know – you have work to do. Quotas are still to be kept, after all.

But take time off if you need it.

But get yer work done.

We Are Not Alone

As the corporate scandal is revealed and Teddy’s madness is called into question, Bugonia reaches clarity while pulling off some unexpected wild turns. In the wrong hands, this material would sour quickly. Instead, the combo of Lanthimos, Stone and Plemons pulls it off in a victory for fresh storytelling.

This writer called out "verisimilitude" as the word of the summer while digesting the mixed bag of major releases, including F1: The Movie, the live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon and the latest iteration of Superman.

As a rebuttal to Teddy’s assertions she’s an alien, Michelle takes the mocking route, commenting on her own low-rent human behaviors and appearance: "the verisimilitude is probably not at the level you’re looking for."

Bugonia’s verisimilitude is a Dali-esque view of the world. Wildly imaginative and open to loads of interpretation, the story melds solid dramatic elements with vibrantly imaginative situations. Toward the end, the action goes absurdist with a twisted thread involving a jug of antifreeze that could’ve upended the movie.

Instead, it illustrates the dangers of bad information and the willingness of people to act on it without a second thought. Throw in a random lack of vigilance giving way to a horrific outcome and the result is a deft mix of tragedy and comedy.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.

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